Featured titles
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Churov and Churbanov, a novel by Ksenia Buksha
Rights sold: Russia - AST
Shortlisted for the 2020 Big Book Award
Churov and Churbanov is a classic Petersburg tale in the tradition of Dostoevsky and Gogol, and the city’s atmosphere is palpable in every scene. The book is also a family drama; a riff on the Gothic theme of the double; a laugh-out-loud adventure novel; a sly triumph of speculative fiction; an elegy on growing up (and old); and a portrait of two familiar types: the awkward, hard-working nice guy (Churov, a pediatric cardiologist) and the life-of-the-party woman magnet (Churbanov, a two-bit wheeler-dealer). Their dissimilar lives begin to entwine after they discover their hearts beat in unison. This seemingly pointless synchrony has a side effect: a pair like them can sync other people’s heartbeats to their own, thus saving the lives of patients with serious heart conditions. But there’s a downside: when one of the original pair dies, all those whose heartbeats the pair synchronized die, too. Churov and Churbanov must follow their hearts, so to speak, in deciding what role their arbitrary gift will play for those around them. Buksha proves we depend on each other more than we realize, and we can save (or destroy) lives even if our hearts don’t beat as one.
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Please check Anne O. Fisher's page for a sample translation and media reviews dedicated to Churov and Churbanov in English: https://www.anneofisher.com/ksenia-buksha
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In Love with a Pencil, essays by Sasha Okun (NF)
Rights sold: Russia - SLOVO
The book was created as a textbook on pencil drawing techniques for beginners and professionals, but it is in fact something much more broad and interesting than just a manual on drawing. It is rather a manual on artistic perception of reality.
"All great masters of the past regardless of their main craft, be it sculpture or painting, were great draftsmen: Rubens, Rembrandt, Matisse, Picasso, Moore, Rodin... Drawing is the foundation, the cornerstone of any visual art. There's an endless amount of books and manuals about the art of drawing. Among them, there are bad, good, and very good ones. The question is, why write yet one more? The fact is that regardless of their quality, all of these books answer the question "how"? Some of them are even entitled "How to draw a portrait (landscape, model, still life, hands, etc.)." However, in my humble opinion, every "how" depends on"what" and "why". These "what" and "why" define the "how" on every stage of creative process, from initial choice of format to the techniques used to achieve the desired result.This book is an attempt to discuss a multitude of drawing-related issues from the point of view of artistic goals set by draftsmen, to take a look at artistic techniques and devices not as of something that exist abstractly and independently, but as of instruments, of means for achieving the goal, and of means that are an integral part of this goal, because in visual art "what" and "how" are inseparable.Still, any book regardless of its genre - be it a textbook, a memoir, a novel, or a tour guide - should fist and foremost make an interesting read. As Alexandre Dumas put it once, "all genres are good, except the boring." This commandment of the great novelist and culinary specialist is more important to me than purity of the genre. So, there a bit of everything in my book: analysis of the works by great masters of the past, practical advice, reflections, memories, anecdotes, and my thoughts about art accumulated over more than forty years I've been teaching people to draw." - writes Okun in a preface to In Love with a Pencil.
Surprisingly, the book conceived as a drawing manual turned out to be a tutorial on the vision of the world in all its diversity. Of course, this book will be extremely valuable and useful to artists, especially for beginners. But at the same time, it will be of use to everyone seeking to expand his general vision of life. Today's literary market is like a food store where dairy, meat, fruits, and booze each belong to its department. Same with books: there are a separate shelves for fiction, educational literature, philosophy, technical books etc. Everything is sorted out by its genre. Okun's book is rare product, a piece that does not fit into one single category, but to many. For publisher, such a non-standard books is a great challenge, but for readers it’s a rare joy. -- Ludmila Ulitskaya
Original languages: Hebrew, Russian. Around 55.000 words, color illustrations.
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